The Tree and the Temple

Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!” (Mark 11:21)

On Sunday he wept.

That seems like a strange response to celebration and acclamation. You won’t see that at a Macy’s parade, the person perched atop the float shedding tears. It’s out of place. Nevertheless, at some point on his journey toward Jerusalem, from his seat on the colt, Jesus wept over the city.

As Luke tells the story, Jesus wept because this city and its inhabitants did not know what would bring them peace. Not much has changed in Jerusalem. For that matter, there are plenty of people in Atlanta and Seattle and Des Moines who share the same ignorance. We want peace, but don’t know how to get it. Maybe we refuse what we know. Peace – the kind that “passes understanding” – is found in Jesus. As Jesus approached Jerusalem he knew that this truth was hidden from their eyes (Luke 19:41-42). They would not look to him for peace. In an effort to restore peace and keep the peace, they would kill him. So Jesus wept for Jerusalem.

But the weeping didn’t last long. On the day after that triumphal entry, according to Mark’s rendering of events, Jesus cursed.

Jesus and his disciples were on their way to the Temple when Jesus spotted a fig tree and went to see if had fruit, possibly hoping for a snack since he was hungry. There was no fruit to be found. It was a bit early in the season for figs and the tree had only leaves on its branches. This provoked the curse – not profanity or foul language, but a pronouncement of permanent barrenness. “May no one ever eat fruit from you again” (Mark 11:14).

Jesus then made his way from the tree to the temple. At the temple he again lets his indignation loose on the money changers and vendors who have distorted what temple worship was all about. He drove them out, turned their tables over, scattered their profits all over the temple floor.

Sunday’s weeping is replaced with Monday’s cursing, the tears prelude to a tirade.

********

I’ve never liked the fig story. While pastors are hesitant to admit this, I’ve never really understood it. The story doesn’t reflect well on our Lord. His “cursing” of tree that has no fruit sounds a bit like a tantrum. Jesus didn’t get his snack and he’s irritable. I don’t put up with this kind of thing from my own children and I sure don’t want to see it in Jesus.

But the tree makes a little more sense when placed in the context of the temple story. Both the tree and the temple are barren and that’s what Jesus sees. He isn’t being petty or throwing a fit in the temple, and he isn’t having a tantrum at the tree. The temple worship that had deteriorated into a commercial enterprise is barren, failing to bear the fruit of true worship. The tree that bears no fruit anticipates what Jesus will find at the temple. The tree is the temple and the temple is the tree.

But in the larger context of Holy Week Jesus’ weeping and cursing, the tears and the righteous indignation say something about how God sees us and the fruitless, barren places in our own lives. On one level, sin is our failure to be all that God made us to be. Sin renders our lives barren and fruitless, a shallow existence that goes through the motions of living but never truly lives.

Jesus sees this and weeps. Jesus sees this and goes to work cleaning house, restoring a heart that truly loves God and bears fruit in the world. What Jesus said to the tree was a word of judgment. What Jesus did in the temple was likewise an act of judgment. And what Jesus did on the cross was judgment as well – but not condemnation.

“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit” (John 15:8). How is the fruitfulness of your life today? Are you going through motions or growing in grace?

Prayer:
Fill me with your Spirit today, O God, that my life might bear fruit in this world. Apart from your help I will not be the person you have made me to be. My own efforts at fruitfulness are bound to fail without your grace. Thank you for the cross and the judgment Jesus bore for my empty, barren ways. Bring me into resurrection life, I pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

A Broken and Beautiful Thing

She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head (Mark 14:3).

By Tuesday Jesus needed a break. He found what he needed in the little village of Bethany.

A traditional chronology of the last week of Jesus’ life tells us that the days played out as follows: Sunday was the day Jesus entered Jerusalem, praises shouted, branches waved, cloaks spread out like a rug, expectations running high. That parade was soon forgotten. On Monday Jesus cleared the temple of money changers and animal vendors, quoting the prophet Jeremiah and chastising those who had turned God’s house of prayer into a den of robbers. Things were getting tense. By Tuesday Jesus needed a break from the noise and clamor of Jerusalem at Passover.

The respite Jesus needed was found at the home of a man known as Simon the Leper. We have no idea who this man was. His name never appears again in the pages of scripture. The simplest explanation was that Simon was a man who had suffered from leprosy until Jesus healed him. Now, well and whole and restored to his home in Bethany, he hosts a meal for Jesus.

While Jesus was reclining at the table “a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume” (14:3) Sound and scent were almost simultaneous, the shattered vessel releasing an aroma that quickly filled the room. And almost as quickly, the murmuring started.

The presenting issue was the waste of such a valuable and precious commodity. That’s what some of those present complained about. It isn’t clear if they were sharing the meal, involved in the intimacies of table fellowship with Jesus and others, or if they were religiously curious spectators. Gossip mongers making nice until they could find something to talk about.

The unspoken issue, the deeper issue, might have been the woman herself. A female had made her way to the place where Jesus reclined – highly unusual in that cultural setting. As Luke tells the story, the woman had a reputation that should have caused a truly righteous man to recoil. That Jesus didn’t flinch caused tongues to wag.

“Leave her alone,” Jesus said as they unleashed their harsh rebukes at her. “She has done a beautiful thing to me” (14:6). Beautiful indeed.

********

All of the beauty in this Holy Week drama is seen in broken things and broken people. The meal is hosted by a man who still lives with the moniker of his former life: Simon the Leper. While possibly used affectionately by neighbors who marveled at his healing, the nickname evoked his broken self. A man once diseased and feared and rejected now made well, hosting a meal for the one who touched his shredded flesh and made him whole again.

There is beauty in the broken jar, a delicate rounded vessel with a long neck, holding expensive perfume. Once a vessel like that was broken, everything in it would flow out, completely emptied, nothing held back. And that act of devotion came from a woman who very likely knew her own brokenness.

The people who missed entirely the beautiful that happened in that room in Bethany were the competent people, the smart people who knew the value of a dollar. They were superficially devout people who spoke loudly abut the poor but were strangers to mercy. They might not have been hostile to Jesus, but they didn’t quite get him. Those words about anointing and burial sailed right by them (14:8). They missed the beautiful thing.

Holy Week won’t mean much to those who avoid their own brokenness and despise it in others. That’s true for the simple reason that Holy Week is taking us to a very broken place – the place of crucifixion and death. Apart from that Resurrection is thin and Easter becomes little more than “cute.” Settle for cute Easter, and you’ve missed the truly beautiful thing.

But seeing the beauty means getting close to the broken things and broken ones: a leper, a questionable woman, a shattered jar – all broken. And then there’s Jesus taking the image to himself. “This is my body . . . broken.”

He has done a beautiful thing for us. Beautiful indeed.

Prayer:
We work hard, O God, at concealing the broken pieces of our lives. We mask them with our charisma and the trappings of a successful life. Teach us to see the beauty in those broken places of our own lives – and also in the brokenness of our neighbor. Save us from the kind of competence that distances us from you and the beautiful thing you want to do in us through Jesus our Lord. Amen. .

Expectations

. . . the whole crowd of disciples began to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen (Luke 19:37).

Few places are harder to live than in the gap between what we expect and what we get, that barren stretch that separates what we think we deserve and what our lives have actually delivered to us. We can barely tolerate being there and we’ll do anything to find a way out.

Sometimes that means we adjust our expectations. The pain of disappointment is alleviated by lowering our sights. But with every downward adjustment hope is diminished, and eventually we find we’ve stopped dreaming altogether.

Another strategy moves in the opposite direction. Sometimes the tension between what we expect and what we get pushes us to do whatever we need to do to secure our own happiness. We lash out at whoever or whatever gets in the way of what should have been.

Of course, we often ricochet back and forth between both of those responses: resignation or anger, passive acceptance or violent force. What we find most difficult is what the Psalmist urged. “Wait on the Lord” (Psalm 27:14).

Holy Week is bracketed by shouting crowds. On the front end of Holy Week we remember the day Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem. Luke tells us that the crowd that welcomed him that day “praised God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen” (19:37). Their shouts were grounded in past events, but those past events had shaped their expectations of what would soon be.

The miracle-working Jesus was their King. The very manner of his approach to Jerusalem, mounted on a colt, spoke to his identity as the one of whom Zechariah had prophesied (Zech. 9:9). These shouts carried the weight of expectations shaped by the hope of what a warrior king would do.

By the time we get to the end of the week those expectations are thoroughly shattered. This celebrated King has failed to deliver and now the crowds are shouting something different. “Hosanna” has morphed to “Crucify.” Holy Week is the story of what it means to walk with Jesus in the midst of unmet expectations.

We find ourselves in good company. This kind of disappointment isn’t unique to the godless or the wicked. Even Jesus’ closest followers struggled during those final days of his life. And they failed. Some of them failed big: Judas’ disappointment with Jesus, and then with himself, was so deep that he took his own life. Peter caved to his fear and denied Jesus. Eventually, by Friday afternoon, all of the disciples have scattered.

And as for us – plenty of us live every day with unmet expectations. Some of them are minor: a driver in front of you failed to use his turn signal; you assumed your spouse had made the bank deposit when you wrote the check, or the kitchen completely messed up your order when you happened to be on a tight schedule.

Of course, some of our expectations go to the core of who we are. A single adult approaches another birthday marking yet another decade without the dreamed of mate and the dreamed of children. The long-awaited retirement brings a deadening boredom and feelings of uselessness. The new purchase becomes a draining burden rather than the status symbol it was supposed to be. The promotion proves to be a wrong fit for your best skills. In short, things are not working out like you had hoped they would.

That gap between what we expected and what we actually experience is the place where faith wanes. During this week – or for that matter during any week – when the tension between what you hoped for and what you’ve received feel unbearable, hear the invitation of Jesus. Stay with him. Listen to his words. Watch what he’s doing. Don’t get swept up the noisy demands and expectations of the culture. God is at work. Such hardly seems to be the case, and you may not see it now. But God is at work.

To all who feel the ache of something that hasn’t worked out according to plan, welcome to Jerusalem.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, keep us close to you in the final days of this Lenten journey. Our expectations so easily become demands. We stop praying and start giving direction. Keep us attentive to what you are doing, especially when life unfolds in ways we didn’t expect or ask for. Teach us trust, even in the shadow of the cross. Amen.